


O Re Piya

by AvaCelt



Series: 2020 Bollywood Prompt Fills [9]
Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background JackxYami for the propaganda, Body Horror, Body Modification, Darkfic, Explicit Sexual Content, Fate & Destiny, Frankenstein but without being a bitch, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inspired by Bollywood, Inspired by Frankenstein, M/M, Resurrection, William-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27694531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt
Summary: The absence of one monster is the creation of another. [AU where Patolli never possesses William; WilliPato, horror romance]
Relationships: Licht/Tetia (Black Clover), Patri/William Vangeance
Series: 2020 Bollywood Prompt Fills [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1969198
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: IAmStoryteller's Best of Black Clover Fic Rec





	O Re Piya

**Author's Note:**

> Title translates into "oh my beloved," and is also the title of yet another Rahat Fateh Ali Khan song, plz go listen.

In a colder world, there was no Patolli sleeping beneath his breast.

* * *

The beatings were just as savage, the neglect as constant as day and night. Meals were taken alone, and nights were spent alone in the barn, the kitchen, sometimes the dungeon, and oftentimes the fields because no one wanted cursed filth indoors.

As in other worlds, the safest place was up in a tree of his making. As always, his only companions were the red-breasted bluebirds who sang him sweet songs.

* * *

“ _Love is the greatest driver in this world, William. If there's no love, there's no reason. Love pushes us forward – it gives us a reason to exist._

* * *

The first time his stepmother kicked him in the face, he wished she'd kick harder. That way, she'd gouge out the eye with the tip of her pointy shoe, so later the wound could get infected, and finally he'd die.

William craved death – he craved finality.

* * *

His days in the Forsaken Realm hadn't been much different. His mother's clan found him just as unbearable as the rest of the villagers, because surely, only a curse would make a child so ugly.

Except there _was no curse._ No one cared that the scar was no different than the million birthmarks found on shoulders, backs, and the underside of thighs, but _because_ it was on his face, surely it _must_ have been a curse.

But it wasn't – William realized that at the tender age of five when he flayed off half his scar with a potato peeler one of the kitchen girls forgot in the garden. He used the clear water of the nearby river as his mirror, because he wasn't permitted the luxury of an actual mirror. William was curious. Maybe if he figured out what was underneath the scar, then maybe he could find a way to make it go away. Maybe if he separated the skin from his body, he could finally be free.

And out of everything, William wanted to believe that his _real_ face lay beneath the folds of dark purple and lavender blemishes, that beneath the mottled skin was his _real_ face, the face of a young boy who could have friends, one that could be loved.

It was the lord of the house who found him lying next to the river, half drenched in blood, staring dully up at the sky. The potato peeler lay limp in one hand, while strips of flesh dried in the late afternoon sun next to his bloodied fingers.

It was the first time his father held him with anything other than contempt.

* * *

“ _Just look at me! Do you think I would have been able to awaken without your love and my love combined? You love me, don't you, William? You loved me at my weakest, when I was boiling with agony. You nursed me back to health, guided me when I had no one else would. Do you think you would have done that if you didn't love? No. You loved me. Without your love, I would never have woken up and put my plan into motion. Without your love, I would be nothing. Without your love, I would have remained dead – in Hell.”_

* * *

William learned that there were ways to be uglier, to be hated even more than before. Mottled skin was nothing compared to dried, mummified-looking flesh.

And so William walked around with three distinct colors instead of two – a quarter white, a quarter purple, and half brown. The white was his father's, the color of nobles. The purple was his birthmark, nature's way of putting him in his place.

The brown belonged to the dead skin he'd peeled away in earnest, skin that cackled madly when William finally realized that there was nothing underneath but blood, meat, and more blood.

And so William walked – a quarter noble, a quarter cursed, and half dead.

* * *

“ _I am thankful for you everyday of my life, my friend. You've done so much for me. You understood me when I could barely understand myself. My rage, my pain, my sadness... you understood me, and you let me feel. You let me feel what I was meant to feel. You never devalued my pain. You let me be; you let me be, William.”_

* * *

At seven, a stable hand dragged him into an empty horse stall, and did the unspeakable. When the pain dulled and he could finally move again, he dragged himself to the kitchen house and begged the maids to let him see his stepmother.

They did. He told her everything, explained why his pants were gone, why his shirt was ripped, why there was blood everywhere below his waist. He begged her to help, because he had no one else.

And she simply laughed.

* * *

The first time William set something on fire was when he found the stable hand eating bread in the same stall he'd raped William.

So William stuffed his mouth full of the remaining bread, held him down with green vines budding with purple flowers, and then roasted him over a low fire until his eyes were jellied and his skin was bubbling with fat.

Then he fed the meat to the pigs.

* * *

He set his stepmother's favorite dressmaker on fire when he learned that she'd told the stable hand to drag him into the stall to teach him a lesson.

“To become a man,” his stepmother had regaled one cold morning before his eighth birthday, because real men could handle something as trivial as being sodomized in a horse stall.

* * *

“ _Stand up for yourself, William. If you don't, they'll pick you apart like crows. I won't let anything happen to you, my friend. So long as our bond perseveres, so will our strength.”_

* * *

Over the next few years, William learned to take notes in his head and keep matches in his pocket. He learned to level his gaze, and look people in the eye when they spoke to him. He didn't bow or scurry away when others came across his face. If anything, he stood as close to them as respectfully possible, forcing them to gaze upon his hideous visage.

He also began to practice his magic in earnest. Trees were easy, because he'd been building trees since birth, but there was more to the earth. William began to practice with roots, vines, flowers, and finally – poison.

* * *

William was able to sprout his first white oleander on his tenth birthday. He did it by the river, where he'd been admiring the fish.

* * *

It turned out burning oleanders could poison a whole city in under an hour, so that's what William did on his twelfth birthday. He spent the months prior strategically planting buds of the devil flower all around the estate.

His birthday fell during Yule, so he set the fires just hours after most of the villagers had left for their relatives' homes. The few that remained, William prayed for.

After the embers died out, all but four members of the Vangeance estate survived, including little William.

A week later, he was declared the head of house, temporarily under the wardship of the captain of the Grey Deer, a dear friend of his father's, until William received his grimoire.

He did not meet Julius Novachrono until his thirteenth birthday.

* * *

“Come join the Magic Knights!!”

“No, thank you,” William said politely. “I enjoy spending time on my own. I don't think I would be a good fit.”

Julius pouted but persisted. “But you have such wonderful magic! I have another ward who also has super-cool magic! You two would get along famously! Tell you what? You join my squad, and I'll buy you tons of books!!”

“... I thought you just wanted me to join the Magic Knights.”

“I do!!”

“But you also want me to join your squad?”

“Yes!!”

“... I'm sorry, but I have a headache.”

* * *

It was less of a headache, and more of a fit of rage. William waited until the listless captain left his estate before he erected ten trees and brought them all crashing down.

The next day, William received a package from the departing Grey Deer. It was some herbal medicine for his make-believe headache, courtesy of their captain.

* * *

In his fourteenth year, William realized he wanted to continue to study plants and flowers of their world, and chose to enroll at the local university. He moved what little he had into a local inn subletting to the poorer students. The Vangeance estate's solicitor tried to convince him to purchase the apartments closer to the university, but he chose the dank studio next to the barbershop. It seemed more pleasant, in its own twisted way.

* * *

“ _One day, I will show you every beauty of this world. Humans don't know real beauty. There's power in the earth, William. If you share your body with the earth, the earth will treat you well. It will share with you the raw power unbeknownst to most humans.”_

* * *

He learned of demons from stolen tomes. William was good at stealing and hiding things. You needed to be when you'd committed patricide before you'd been declared an adult in the eyes of the law.

He learned about monsters, forbidden magic, and sacrifice.

William blinked. No one had ever sacrificed anything for him.

* * *

The day after his grimoire ceremony, he met his no-longer-ward at the Grey Deer headquarters. The members balked as he walked into their base, stiff and regal, despite the ghastly countenance.

“I wish to join the Magic Knights after the conclusion of my studies at the university,” he told Julius Novachrono, who had been crying about paperwork but was now smiling. “I will participate in the exams in three years time, and hope to join as a junior Knight.”

Julius Novachrono, in his glee, did not notice the pink oleander peeking out of the breast pocket of William's pristine blue jacket.

* * *

William studied diligently. He also made friends.

It was a new feeling, having friends. His first friend was a bespectacled boy who swept floors at the inn and lived in a boy's hostel on tenement row. The boy quite liked mushrooms, and could create them with his magic. In return, William erected an orange tree and gave his first friend a piece of fruit.

He helped En Ringard study for his Magic Knight exams and attended the ceremony when it was time. He watched his friend get rejected in favor of the nobility, even though his magic, his form, and his precision were well beyond what would be expected from a junior Magic Knight.

En continued to work at the inn over the years, sending half his earnings home, while taking the Magic Knight exams every year they were made available, while William studied his texts and learned about the various flora of the world, even the ones that had gone extinct over the centuries.

* * *

William's second friend came in the form of a demon made of smoke, one that desired a corporeal form, one that would do _anything_ to manifest into the human world, since it was caged in a small black cube barely the size of William's palm.

His second friend's name was Zagred. William found him while hunting for traces of an ancient plant out in the forbidden realm, next to a little village named Hage.

* * *

William's third friend came to him the day of his own Magic Knights exam, the one En Ringard had lost once again due to his birth, while William passed with flying colors. At the end, when every hand went up for his name, William took to the podium.

“I will join whoever will take my friend,” he said out loud to the Magic Knight captains sitting on their individual thrones. The leader of the Silver Eagles bristled while Julius Novachrono sat beaming in his seat. “He is the most powerful candidate in this arena, and yet for the last three exams, he's been rejected due to his birth in favor of weaker, bluer blood. Whoever takes my friend will have my allegiance until death.”

“Me!!” Julius bolted up and yelled before any of the other captains could get a word in. “Come join my squad!! We have good cooks!!”

“We'll take them,” the foreigner in the Grey Deer cape barked, forcing his captain back into a sitting position with the help of another Grey Deer, one with long black hair tied back in a ponytail.

Later, the foreigner introduced himself. “Name's Yami,” he said gruffly, reaching out a hand.

“William,” William said, shaking the man's hand.

* * *

“ _I'll be with you forever, William. No matter what – I will always be by your side.”_

* * *

William's fourth friend was the memory of a dead elf.

William learned about the elves from Zagred, learned about the genocide he'd favored, the countless deaths, the humans who'd believed every word out of his mouth and helped him to carry out his plans.

Zagred had done it for his body.

“The body is everything, William. Everything! Without the body, you can't live; you can't _love_. How can anyone expect anything from me when I've never felt my own flesh _in the sun?_ Give me a body, and watch what I can do! I can do so much, William, so much.”

The demon rambled, as it often did, insane as it was after thousands of years stuck in a cube buried deep in the earth.

But it got William thinking – the body was everything to humanity. The body was what his father needed after his elder half-brother had died of consumption, so that there would be an heir to the Vangeance estate. The body was what his stepmother wanted to punish, because the body had taken what she considered rightfully her son's, and so she'd had him raped so that his body was further vilified and unable to handle the burden of being a Vangeance.

The body was what plagued William, but he was too much of a coward to kill himself.

“There was a little elf, William, one who loved his king dearly. Did you know? He was supposed to be be the key. Oh, how I wish the ritual had worked. If only it'd _worked_. The little elf would have sacrificed all of humanity if it meant being reunited with his king. I followed him closely for years, watched him fall in love with someone he could never have, and I was sure the ritual would work! If only it did... Oh, how I wanted his rage to _blossom_ , William! So easily manipulated, so full of love, sadness, hatred, pain! All for a king who fell in love with a human – the irony, William, the irony!”

William thought about the foolish little elf, and wondered what would have become of him if Zagred's plans had come to fruition.

* * *

William saw the symptoms before anyone else, because En Ringard still sent money home, and because his mother's family had fled their village.

A revolt was brewing. After decades of growing poverty, continued abuse by the more corrupt members of the Magic Knights, and little immigration due to bans by all four governments on the continent, a civil war was finally in the making.

William decided his allegiances long before King Augustus Kira Clover XIII announced that all traitors were to be publicly executed.

* * *

William memorized every story Zagred had ever told, and cross-referenced them with local legends, children's fairytales, and forbidden books only sold on the black market. He absorbed as much as he could, and then processed it whilst traveling, fighting, and through many of the other actions that came with being an average Magic Knight.

He thought about the little elf.

“What happened to him, Zagred?” He asked one night, while Yami was asleep out some feet away, snoring beneath a burlap sack William had fashioned into a blanket for his tired friend.

“Oh, he's dead,” Zagred wheezed.

“He didn't reincarnate?”

“No... I suppose he didn't. If he had, then he would have awakened by now. I suspect he went into the afterlife shortly before his king went mad. Well, for his sake, I hope he did. Would have been a pity if he had to see the love of his life transform into a behemoth right in front of his eyes.”

“So they're in the afterlife now,” William thought out loud.

“Who the fuck are you talking to, Scarface?” Yami grumbled. “I'm tryna sleep.”

“My subconscious,” William retorted with a soft smile. “Funny William says hello.”

“Tell funny William to shut his trap,” he grunted before the snoring resumed.

“I wonder if you can tear a man from the afterlife,” William whispered thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?” Zagred asked curiously.

“I mean bring them back to earth – snatch them from the comforts of the afterlife and force them into mortality again.”

“There's no such this as resurrection, little William, only reincarnation,” the demon wheezed. “The body rots, even if the soul persists.”

“Does it now?” William chuckled softly, sprouting an ancient flower from the tips of his fingers.

* * *

En once called him the mother of flowers.

“Mother?” William asked placidly.

“You birth them in your arms much like a mother holds her child,” En said jovially, “and they just are. They can exist without you, unlike other earth-based magicks. You can leave a tree here today, and it'll be here after we both pass peacefully. You give birth to life, William.”

William thought long and hard about what that meant.

* * *

“Can you lead me to where they died, Zagred?” William asked one afternoon.

“Why?” The demon wheezed, shuffling about in its cube.

“Curiosity.”

The demon wheezed in assent, and the next morning, William took the day off in the name of magic scholarship.

* * *

Julius was freshly appointed Wizard King, widely regarded, and loved dearly by the masses. It was meant to quell the rage brewing at the bottom, assuage some feelings, maybe even encourage harmony.

But the love of an emperor was nothing compared to a hungry belly.

* * *

William was back in Hage in the early days of spring, a few months after his eighteenth birthday. He broke fast at the local farmers' hall, before napping beneath the branches of a large tree. He planned to nap until noon, but was woken up when something dropped on his head.

William blinked comically, rubbing the aching spot in the middle of his skull.

“I'M SO SORRY MISTER!” Screeched a panicked little boy.

“Asta, I think he's hurt,” sobbed another little boy.

“Stop crying, Yuno, he's the one who got hit!”

“But he's hurt,” sobbed the little boy William assumed was Yuno.

William rubbed his eyes, yawned, and finally took into consideration the two little boys. They had a bundle of fruit at their feet, and when William looked to where the offending item was that hit him on the head, he found that one of the fruits had come loose and dropped on his head instead of the basket.

The little boy with the black hair continued to sob as the boy with the ash grey hair tried to calm him down, while also panicking over William's injured skull.

William felt both jealousy and pity bubble in his chest.

A plastic smile stretched onto his face. “It's quite alright,” he assured the children. “No harm done, but if you don't mind, I'd love to eat a few.”

“Are you sure?” The ash grey haired boy asked hesitantly. “Our Sister can fix you right up! She has magic fingers!”

“Not really,” hiccuped the boy with black hair, whose sobs were finally receding. “Asta just thinks she has magic fingers because he _likes_ her,” he managed to huff between hiccups.

“I'm gonna marry her!” Asta declared, eyes sparkling with mirth.

William found the plastic smile receding and a real smile blooming on his hideous face. “Is that so?” William asked pleasantly.

“Yes! Now come on, Sister Lily has to fix you so you can eat some fruit!”

And so William followed the two little boys back to their church, where the residing Sister iced his head bump while apologizing profusely, and then offered him lunch with her tribe of orphans and the Father in charge.

William ate, laughed, and regaled the peasants with stories of his adventures as a Magic Knight. Then he gathered his things, waved goodbye, and headed back into the forest.

Rage bubbled like black tar in his chest, and he wondered, why he wasn't born here in this village where not a single child made fun of his face, where there was was food for a weary traveler, where even a magicless boy could have a best friend?

Red hot rage coursed through William's blood as he stalked deeper into the forest. Where was _his_ childhood friend? Where was _his_ keeper? Why did others get to enjoy such trivial things while he suffered? Was that the purpose of his existence? Simply to suffer?

“You're here,” the demon wheezed in his breast pocket, where it lay next to the oleanders William liked to bloom on his fingers.

The rage cleared, and William found himself in a clearing covered in wildflowers and stones.

“Here?”

“Caged and killed,” Zagred confirmed.

William bent down and touched the stony ground with a palm of his hand. He didn't feel anything. “Are you sure?”

“The earth, William. Feel it and you'll know.”

And so he did. He brushed aside rocks, wildflowers, and weeds, and then laid back against the cold earth. Then he closed his eyes and listened.

* * *

“ _If you were alive during my time, I think we would have been the best of friends. You've helped me to understand humans a little bit better, William. I still hate them, but my hatred has meaning now because of you. Maybe if you were alive then, perhaps I would have been kinder to Tetia. Though I doubt it would have changed my fate, but at least...”_

* * *

William woke up in Hell. He watched fire rain down on him, piercing his flesh and tearing his bones. He lived, died, was reborn, and died again. He felt love in his heart, and hatred in his blood. He watched as the event replayed over and over again, as he died over and over again.

He watched a king hold his woman, swollen with child, dead. He watched those he did not know die screaming in agony, unable to escape the cage. He saw his kin, mere humans, watch as an entire tribe perished in light and fire. He watched, he felt, he became.

“HOW DARE YOU!”

William's head snapped towards the sound, the voice, the _agony._

“I'LL NEVER-”

The boy never got to finish his sentence. The beam of light that pierced through his chest silenced him before he could finish his promise, and in that moment, William knew that he'd found the one he was looking for.

When he woke up, the sun had already set, and a gentle breeze was drifting by.

When William woke up, all the ghosts turned to him.

* * *

“ _But that's all in the past now. We're here, and we're bound – now and forever.”_

* * *

William studied, listened, and came up with a plan. All the while, the ghosts followed him around.

William dug into the ground, and uncovered the bones of all those who'd perished. He spent three days collecting bones, going into Hage for his meals, and visiting the church in the afternoons to listen to the Sister tell tales of the great beast and the first Wizard King.

After he uncovered every bone he could find, he planted trees and flowers in the empty graveyard. He absorbed the mana in the ground, and replaced it with his own. Now the clearing bloomed with oranges and apples, stones married to flowers, birds chirping about as they claimed new nests. He told the children in Hage about the new orchard he'd created, and encouraged them to pick its fruit.

He pocketed one stone, a finger bone, and some dirt, and carried them in a little bottle. It was a reminder of his new mission in life, the one where he'd see En's words come true.

* * *

“No one's ever sacrificed anything for me,” he told En one evening as they played chess, Yami and his long-haired friend getting terribly drunk less than two yards away.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, there was once a monster that sacrificed an entire race just so he could have achieve his dream.”

“Did he succeed?”

“No, he didn't.”

“Good,” En said with a frown. “Sacrificing others is unjust. It isn't even sacrifice, it's murder – a massacre. Sacrifice has to be consensual. Someone has to _want_ to die for something. More than that, oftentimes the one who wants to do the sacrificing is the one least likely to succeed. A true sacrifice is to willingly give yourself to a cause, _for_ a cause. If that monster had sacrificed itself for something or someone, then perhaps it would have seen its dream come true.”

“Perhaps,” William said pleasantly. “Your turn.”

Later, when Yami and his friend bullied En and him into drinking with them, William thought long and hard about what the little elf would do if Zagred had succeeded in his plans, if he'd managed to sacrifice humanity thinking his beloved king would come back.

* * *

“ _I will keep you warm under my breast, just as you kept me safe all these years. No one will wake you from your rest, and when I die a natural death, you and I will walk into the afterlife together. We'll be together forever, William.”_

* * *

The first revolts broke out in the commoner cities two years after William joined the Grey Deer. Droves of men and women with silver-tipped pitchforks and torches drenched in dragon oil stormed government buildings and courthouses.

The first execution was conducted by a Silver Eagle against a fifteen year old girl. The girl's mother never stopped screaming.

* * *

“Will you help me manifest, my dear William?” Zagred wheezed in his cube.

“Yes,” William lied pleasantly while looking at the ghosts that followed his every step.

So many ghosts, except three – the human woman, the king, and Zagred's key.

* * *

William found Rades Spirito beaten half to death and stuffed into the hollow trunk of a dying tree. William remembered the boy from the Magic Knights exams not three months prior.

He spied the stab wounds and welts, shook his head, then forced the dying tree to expel the boy from its grasp. He carried the boy and his torn grimoire back with him, refusing to let him be claimed by the deep forests of the Neutral Zone.

* * *

In times of civil war, even the army began to crumble. William turned his trees on his fellow Grey Deer when they tried to raze a peasant farm to the ground in drunken rage.

“Traitor!” They hissed.

William killed half the squad before forcing the rest into submission.

* * *

En and several other Grey Deer who hadn't been part of the mob followed William out of the brigade. William tied up those who submitted, and left them for Yami to find.

The defection wasn't a surprise, as other squads were splitting at the seams as well. The Silver Eagles had pledged themselves to the ruling Kira clan and the nobility, while half the Crimson Lions had split and merged with the Coral Peacocks in order to pledge allegiance to the commoner and peasant citizenry.

William built his base in his birthplace, a village half-destroyed out in the Forbidden Realm. It was a castle with one hundred rooms, six floors, balconies wrapped around every story, and filled with enough food, weaponry, and beds to house an army.

Many were shocked when they found the newly minted Magic Knight, Rades Spirito, recovering in William's house of thorns, but no one asked why. There was no reason to. Their country was falling apart, and they could use every soldier they could find.

* * *

Yami declared his allegiance to Julius, who declared his allegiance to the nobility. William didn't cry.

* * *

“You want me to what?” Rades balked.

“I want you to snatch a soul from the afterlife and put it in an artificial body.” William said plainly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Putting ghosts in the artificial bodies will be easier, I assume, since their souls are still wandering the earth, but I also want someone who's already... departed.”

“That's impossible,” Rades spat, as if he didn't put movement back into corpses.

“Nothing is impossible, my friend,” William said softly. “I'm still creating the artificial bodies. They'll be based out of some extinct flora I've managed to bring back with my magic, so I suspect it will take some time for them to stabilize. Once they're finished, I'd like to fill them with life. Please help me.” William didn't tell him about the skeletons he'd been assembling. He thought that if the plant-based bodies could be built around actual bone, then perhaps the ghosts would enter only the bodies that belonged to them.

But that would take time, and William had plenty.

Rades choked back the yelp in his throat and nodded shakily. “W-where do I start?”

William slid the little black cube towards Rades. “Zagred here will explain which soul to look for. Worry not about the rest. The ghosts never leave me.”

“William is making me a body too,” Zagred gushed from his cube. _“I will finally feel the sun!”_

Rades merely gaped, frozen in fear.

* * *

William wasn't stupid. He knew the demon spoke in half-truths, and was mostly insane. He also knew that it _was_ a demon, because only a demon could recount the past in such astute detail, details he experienced personally when all the elves' blood and mana poured into him from the ground.

All the stories the villagers and the Vangeance estate's staff used to whisper to scare the children were true. Thousands of years ago, there used to be a race so utterly blessed with mana, that their power was both feared and revered.

They were a race so beautiful, so elegant that the princess of the humans fell in love with their king.

Tetia Silvamillion Clover fell in love, and so the elves perished.

* * *

“Patolli,” Zagred wheezed one afternoon. “The little elf, my key – his name was Patolli.”

* * *

“What are you planning, bastard?” Yami asked, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“Revolution,” William promised, and disappeared in a tangle of vines.

* * *

And he was. William believed in little. He was born in filth, and suspected he would die in such. His existence had no purpose, and his pain was endless, so it only made sense that he should _create_ a purpose.

A ghost groaned at his feet, seeking the warmth from his soles.

“Soon,” he told the girl with glassy eyes and burnt skin.

* * *

He wanted to speak with the elf who was Zagred's key, and ask him why he found salvation while his fellow elves wandered the earth below. He wanted to know if his king was worth leaving the rest of the elves in purgatory. He wanted to know why he didn't succumb to Zagred's games, and usher in Hell for the humans.

William wanted to know why Patolli deserved to find peace when no one else did.

* * *

The civil war raged for six years. In that time, William helped to unite several border towns into small but sturdy, independent communities. Hage became the Forbidden Realm's center of communications, led by the priest at the village's only church. Several other villages played their part, whether it be the central food provider, or the town where all the best weapons were being forged. Assisted by William's vast wealth and resources, unity blossomed between the isolated towns. They fought with everything they had.

Bloodbaths followed each and every city, and the capital was torn to shreds. Children were born and raised in wartime, and many died before they could receive their grimoires.

The Vangeance estate became another stronghold, the base for villages who'd paid tithe to the Vangeance family for centuries. William gifted them the land, the castle, and every weapon in the armory. The cities near the Vangeance castle were freed with their aid, the loyalists pushed further and further inward until there was no place left for the two kings to hide.

William's birthplace became the resistance's seat of council. It was where commoners like Jack the Ripper, exiled witches like Dorothy Unsworth, and peasants like as Seihi came together to build the constitution for their new government, one they swore would no longer punish and discriminate based on blood and legacy. It was where the militias learned basic training, led by En Ringard's kind but firm command.

It was where William was elected as the man who'd represent them at the first and only parley.

It was where William Vangeance was declared a hero.

* * *

A month after William's twenty-sixth birthday, Julius Novachrono surrendered to the rebel forces in exchange for the lives of his soldiers. He promised a peaceful transition to the new, democratic government, and vouched for his best men. He swore that they would not turn their sword against the democratically elected leaders of the new nation.

On the day of Julius Novachrono and Augustus Kira Clover XIII's sentencing to life imprisonment, Rades Spirito finally managed to find the key.

* * *

“William, what are you doing?” En gasped, watching as husks in the form of humans lay prone on a vast field of daisies.

“Bringing back a friend,” William said pleasantly.

After six years of research, experimentation, and the assistance of several other commoner scientists determined to aid their beloved William Vangeance, Rades Spirito finally managed to open the gate to the afterlife.

Then he snatched a soul from its eternity in comfort.

* * *

Patolli woke up screaming.

* * *

“What have you done, William?” Julius whispered, looking at the army of ghosts that wailed as they scrabbled to find their bodies.

“I've given life,” William answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

* * *

The ghosts had spent millennia tethered to their place of death, unable to move to the afterlife due to Zagred's botched plan. Tetia Silvamillion Clover's soul was not present in the clearing, which made sense to William, as he'd seen her perish as one of the first in the genocide. The elven king, Licht, had also departed, which again made perfect sense since the first Wizard King had fought and defeated him, exorcising his soul from whatever Hell Zagred had in store for him.

But during the genocide, Patolli had perished and departed as well, and it unnerved William to no end. The question had plagued him over the years, even as Rades worked to find the connection point between the living and the dead.

The ghosts had only left their burial ground after William removed their bones. Many followed him around, even though he held in his glass bottle only a single piece of bone. It was as if they knew – they knew that he was their savior.

“You remind me of him,” Zagred wheezed the evening of the resurrection.

“Of whom?”

“The key.”

* * *

The ghosts screeched as William channeled his and Rades' power into the plant-and-bone bodies William painstakingly perfected over the years.

Julius Novachrono sat tied to his chair, watching in horror as the screaming banshees clawed their way into each body, until every soul had a home.

Patolli screamed the loudest because he was the last.

* * *

The elves were both elves as well as monsters. William's artificial bodies had absorbed the shock of the souls entering their core, but they were slow adjusting to the elven mana coursing through their veins. Even worse, the transformation of the body into an image of the soul took several weeks, weeks that were spent listening to the agonized wails of women and children being forced back into a mortal coil.

En watched him work, simultaneously horrified and astonished. Julius sat steely quiet in the chair, guarded by William's most trusted soldiers, men who believed in their mother of flowers. William wanted him to witness the birth of a new dawn, because he found that he cared about Julius, and wanted Julius to know that revolution came in different forms.

“They were unjustly murdered by our kin,” William said softly. “Do you ever wonder, Captain? How that would feel?”

* * *

Yami refused to speak to him, and so William left him alone in his room, guarded around the clock by another set of soldiers.

* * *

Patolli roared, sickly white eyes set into black sclera, choppy white hair sprouting wildly from his head. He hadn't been a ghost, hadn't been tethered to his place of death for the last millennia. He'd entered the afterlife, lived his natural life, and continued to live his eternity in peace and harmony with his king and those who had departed prior to the massacre.

He hadn't been tethered to purgatory, so the resurrection was worse for him. His pain was raw and unreal, and William found it fitting.

* * *

His teeth were sharp as wooden spikes, and his rage and hurt were so strong, William almost buckled underneath the aura of menace.

But he remained on his feet. When the six-and-a-half feet tall body finally began to adjust to the elven mana and physically transform into the image of his soul, the image of a grown man having lived well in the afterlife for centuries, William finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The first morning Patolli woke up without screaming, William hugged him.

* * *

William wanted to know what drove another to sacrifice, and why no one ever sacrificed themselves for him. He could have asked any soldier in his squad, or any farmer in Hage, but he decided to ask the departed instead.

He wanted to ask the key if the comfort of eternity with his king was worth leaving behind the rest of his tribe.

* * *

Patolli bit off his left ear in the middle of the hug. William screamed while Patolli snarled, tearing the flesh free. Blood stained his robes and trousers while four mages held down the screaming creature, while two more tended to William's wound.

But William didn't see any of the mages. He only saw what was in front of him.

All he saw was the most beautiful creature in existence.

* * *

“You didn't have enough living friends, so you raised a bunch of zombies?” Yami chuckled and took a long drag of his cigarette before speaking again. “Pathetic.”

William bristled but didn't deny it.

* * *

After the resurrection was complete, many of the elves remained feral. They attacked the guards, other elves, even themselves.

Many others died a natural death in their artificial bodies, unable to handle the weather, the food, or their mana coursing through a foreign object. Unlike before, their souls departed this time. They were no longer tethered to their burial ground like they had been before. Many waved to the humans and elves that remained, ascending with smiles.

William cried for the first time in nineteen years.

* * *

A month after the resurrection, only seven elves and Patolli survived.

* * *

“Look at how pretty you've become,” Fana whispered softly through the bars of Patolli's door. “You lived well, didn't you? Did you think about us?” Her lips stretched into a grin full of sharp teeth and a black tongue. “Or did you forget?”

* * *

Rhya, Fana, Vetto, Charla, Ronne, Lufulu, and Kivn received new grimoires when they could leave the castle grounds without the urge to tear a human to shreds. It took eight months of healing magic, language and communication practice, and the daily doldrums of the mortal coil for them to understand that they were no longer ghosts who could pass through objects. Now they were mortal again, so they needed to eat, shit, and dress like one.

William fulfilled their every demand. From clothes to hair ornaments, William used all his power and influence to give the elves their every wish.

And yet the elf he desired to speak to most refused to even look his way, and stayed shut away in his room.

* * *

“Did you finally get over Licht?” Rhya drawled lazily, lounging on a chair he's slid up against Patolli's door. “Or did you spent the last millennium mooning after a married man?”

* * *

“Come out, coward!” Charla roared, banging on the door. “You went to Heaven, you bastard! You have no right to cry! You didn't have to crawl in the mud like we did! Come out and face us!”

* * *

Patolli did – one year after his resurrection.

* * *

On William's twenty-seventh birthday, he told Zagred that he'd finally perfected his body.

“Oh, William,” wheezed the ghost-like creature in the cube. “Thank you, my dear William. Thank you, thank you, thank you thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou-”

Then William handed the demon to Patolli as a peace offering.

“He's the one who orchestrated your deaths,” he told the elf who refused to look him in the eye. “Do what you will.”

* * *

William learned some more forbidden magic the day Patolli finally confronted the rest of the resurrected elves. Rades and En were afraid they were going to tear the elf apart, but were proven wrong.

Fana with her pink hair and sharp teeth merely hugged the elf. Rhya patted his hair, even though Patolli eclipsed him in height. Others came around to give Patolli hugs, while Charla and Vetto merely grunted that it was finally time.

Then together, they opened the gate to Hell and bound Zagred in ten thousand years of darkness.

William smiled when the demon begged him for help and he did nothing.

* * *

The elves left the next morning. It was the only time Patolli looked at him with something other than hatred in his eyes.

William didn't get to ask his questions until many years later.

* * *

Dorothy Unsworth came to him the next morning and told him that the ancient Salamander had chosen a new companion – and that it was none other than Fana of the Elf Tribe.

* * *

“How long you planning to keep me locked up here?” Yami groused, flipping the page of his comic book.

“Until your natural life is finished,” William said with a small smile. “It's _life_ imprisonment, Yami, not a vacation.”

Yami grunted but couldn't help but smile. “How many prisoners you think are sleeping on silk sheets and eating fresh bread in the morning?”

“Just two,” William hummed.

Julius, who sat across from William, didn't add much to the banter. In fact, he didn't do much of anything these days.

* * *

Patolli came to him in the dead of night two years later.

He was the only elf to retain a fully human appearance due to his time in the afterlife. William marveled at the hair spun from white gold, the magnificent height, and arms and thighs that spoke of limitless strength. He'd never witnessed Patolli use his magic, and he didn't get him a new grimoire. He didn't know what he was capable of, but he knew that the elf hated him for stealing him away from an eternity in the light.

But William accepted his hatred. He'd never met something as beautiful, and he suspected any punishment was worth having been able to hug Patolli just once in his life.

Patolli was quick, vicious. He slammed William onto the bed to muffle any thrashing, then sat on his chest to crush his ribs, before wrapping his fingers around William's throat to choke the life out of him.

William suspected as such, and knew that deep down, he deserved it. This was the culmination to a purposeless existence – death by the hands of the most beautiful creature he'd ever laid eyes on, the creature he helped bring back to life, because he was the mother of flowers, and he wanted Patolli to see all of the flowers this world had to offer.

“Filth,” Patolli growled down at him, eyes gleaming with madness, with hatred.

And all William could do was smile, wishing he could run his hands through Patolli's bountiful white hair just once before breathing his last.

* * *

William woke up to three healers hovering around him, his entire body in pain. Yami barked at them to give him space.

“You scared the shit out of us, Scarface,” Yami sighed after the healers had scattered. “You woulda been dead if we hadn't heard the crash.”

“Crash?” William asked, puzzled.

Yami took a drag of his cigarette and pointed at the shards lying in the corner. “Yeah. You crashed into the mirror and cut yourself in three places. And yes, the doctors saw the strangulation marks on your neck and the bruises on your chest. I'm gonna tell you this for your own good, but you can't be having rough sex everyday, or else you're gonna put your best guy in jail. I told 'em I knew you were out gallivanting this time, but next time, I'm beating your ass _and_ his ass. Best to do that crazy shit in moderation. Can't have you crashing into things after getting the life choked and fucked outta you, raises too many red flags, though I respect your level of enthusiasm.”

William choked on his spit and pulled his blankets closer to his chest. “Oh,” he squeaked.

Yami grinned lasciviously. “Don't worry, I only told like... ten people hehehe.”

William blushed and Yami howled with laughter.

* * *

Patolli found him again a month later while he was planting flowers in a village near the Heart border.

“They convinced me not to kill you,” he growled. William almost fell back against his freshly planted flowers.

“Well, t-tell them I said thank you,” William sputtered.

Patolli's long hair was pulled into a low ponytail, while short, soft bangs covered his forehead. A single braid draped across the left side of his head, wreathed in pink and green jewels, pinned into the low ponytail. His tall, limber form was wrapped in loose, ivory clothes, and he wore simple leather sandals. He carried what William presumed was a grimoire, in a utility belt that was strapped to a powerful thigh.

His eyes were still as beautiful as a golden dawn.

“How are you the same one who exorcised seventy of us?” Patolli grumbled out loud. “Vetto said I should thank you for giving us a second chance at life, but I just can't bring myself to do it. You're a liar, William Vangeance. I just have to figure out which lies you've told so they'll stop _believing_ in you.”

“Well,” William started, finding that Patolli's eyes were as mesmerizing as they were haunting, “I've had to lie to get my way around things... but I didn't lie when I said that I sought to free your tribe.”

“Why?” Patolli snapped, moving much like a sprite, in front of his face in a flash, a hand around his throat not a second later. “Why did you bring _me_ back? I had passed on!”

“I wanted to touch you,” William blurted out. “I... I wanted to meet the key. I wanted to meet the one...”

“The one what?” Patolli barked.

“The one who could have ended the world,” William whispered in awe.

* * *

Patolli thought him insane, but still he visited.

Sometimes he stayed for minutes, sometimes for hours.

Every time he came to William, William told him about the stories Zagred had told him, and asked him questions about love, sacrifice, and duty. William had an impeccable memory, so he recited Zagred's stories word-for-word, and asked the same questions, over and over again. He told Patolli about the plan, the first Wizard King's sacrifice, and Licht's eventual exorcism by the hands of his best friend. He asked Patolli about why Zagred chose him, why the elves had to be sacrificed, why love was as much of a detriment as it was a boon.

It took months of William's countless stories before Patolli finally told one of his own.

* * *

“Tetia survived.”

“She did?”

Patolli nodded hollowly. “One twin died in her stomach, but she managed to survive and give birth to the other. She fled to where the Water Spirit dwells, and raised her child amongst the clans there. The Water Spirit allows for the races to blend in her domain. Tetia raised her child amongst dwarves, humans, and fae. That child went on to have children of her own. Their descendants still live in the Water Spirit's domain.”

“So that's where you've gone,” William said with understanding. “Did she live long? Tetia?”

“Seventy years. I counted every day until she walked through the gate. Licht broke down in tears the second he saw her. He waited for her.”

William understood the implications behind that, understood that in the seventy years Patolli grew old and beautiful, not once did the king look his way. Seven decades in an afterlife free of pain, and the king waited for the human who'd stolen his heart in life, refused to drink of the other beauty in his presence, and remained waiting for his one and only. William understood. He understood the king; he understood Patolli.

They sat in silence, William's red-breasted bluebirds chirping in his ear while Patolli stared at the river by his feet.

* * *

He kissed Patolli one winter evening. They'd told stories for seven hours straight, until the the sun began dipping in the horizon. A bright new world was beginning, and William found that he wanted to welcome it with a kiss. He counted thirty meetings over the past year, and his thirtieth birthday just passed by the previous week. He thought the moment auspicious.

And so he kissed – he kissed Patolli, and Patolli kissed him back.

* * *

“So you gonna introduce us to the guy or what?” Yami grunted one evening as they played cards.

“We're taking it slow,” William huffed.

“Leaving fingerprints on yer throat aint takin it 'slow,' Scarface.”

“I don't see you and Mr. Ripper taking it any slower,” William sniffed.

Yami spat out his cigarette and lunged at William over the table. It took two mages to split them apart.

They laughed the entire time.

* * *

The new leaders of the nation pardoned Yami and the rest of Julius' soldiers after four years of imprisonment. Julius was still bound to William's estate for the rest of his natural life, so Yami took it upon himself to declare himself ward of the former Wizard King, and took over a suite of rooms in another part of the castle.

Yami lived as he always did, with gusto.

* * *

Their first night together, Patolli took him in a field blooming with red and pink flowers. When Patolli came inside of him, William sobbed into his white gold hair. For the first time in his life, he was truly and utterly happy.

* * *

William left his castle to En to Yami, and his research to Rades and his team of commoner scientists. He bid his friends goodbye with just the clothes on his back and his grimoire.

Later, when he met Patolli at the border of Heart, he cried into his beloved's arms.

* * *

“You remind me of her,” Patolli told him their first night together in Heart. The elf gently thumbed the place where William's left ear used to be.

“Who?”

Patolli's eyes softened with pain. “Tetia.”

William blinked. He never expected to be compared to the king's beloved.

Later that evening when the stars were out and the rest of the elf tribe was tucked away in their respective huts, William climbed on top of Patolli and kissed him hard. He rode him in earnest, until his legs cramped and his breaths came in short gasps. Patolli grunted beneath him, bucking his hips and kneading the soft flesh of William's hips, while stroking William's weeping cock. William keened, dug his fingers into Patolli's chest, and came with a harsh gasp while Patolli finished inside of him with a soft grunt.

William eased himself off Patolli, and laid down on his chest. A halo of white blonde hair framed Patolli's head, his bangs askew, and his braid undone. William smiled and rested his cheek against his beloved's chest. His eyes fluttered shut as sleep began to claim him.

“You belong with me,” Patolli said moments before William dozed off.

“Hmm?” William managed just before sleep took him. He never heard what Patolli said next, but the next morning, he woke up with Patolli's arms wrapped protectively around him, and he knew that it didn't matter because actions spoke louder than words.

And in this world, they were finally free.

* * *

“ _And we'll be together, always – in this world, the next, and every other world in existence.”_

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> The dialogue in italics peppered throughout the story is Patolli from the current universe, reciting Billiam his sweet nothings. I just wanted to write a scary fic with the usual gothic horror tropes, but with the twist of a happy ending. *3*


End file.
